John A. List

John A. List, in full John August List, (born September 25, 1968, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.), American economist who made novel contributions to the fields of experimental and behavioral economics. He helped to popularize the use of field experiments as viable tools for analyzing a broad set of economic questions. In 2011 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

List’s major contribution to economic science was to develop novel methods for testing economic theories using data obtained from field experiments. Such experiments involved data collection from real markets through careful randomization that allowed for the separation of control and treatment groups, thus creating laboratory-like conditions in which to test theories. In his research, List utilized data from a diverse set of markets, ranging from shopping malls and high schools to Costa Rican chief executive officers (CEOs) and the Chicago Board of Trade. His work provided much insight into the operation of those markets, the pricing mechanisms involved, and the role that incentives play in the decision-making processes of market participants.

By using field experiments, List was able to draw interesting conclusions regarding a broad range of issues, including discrimination; the effect of incentives on educational outcomes, work effort, and weight loss; the effects of environmental regulations; factors that influence charitable giving; and many others. For example, in his joint work with Tanjim Hossain, in which they gathered data from manufacturing plants in China, List demonstrated that incentives designed to trigger loss aversion were surprisingly effective in improving worker productivity. As he discovered, workers who are paid a bonus at the beginning of a project and are told that they can keep it if they achieve a certain goal are much more likely to exert the necessary effort than workers who are paid nothing at the outset and are told that they will receive the same bonus after they reach the same goal.

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